The Real Enemy

At the moment, many writers in the alternative media are feeling extremely angry,
depressed and frustrated at what is happening in Palestine and Lebanon. Despite
hundreds of editorials and essays eloquently decrying Israeli aggression and provocation
and spelling out the very obvious reason for the long-standing violence in the
Middle East, Israel continues its murderous rampage, killing almost 70 Lebanese
civilians yesterday. Yesterday's attacks involved Israeli bombing of entire Lebanese
villages, such as Srifa in the south west of Lebanon where Israeli F-16 jets,
supplied free of charge by the US government, destroyed 15 houses, killed at least
20, and wounded at least 30, men women, young and old alike. The truly horrifying
thing however is that the inhabitants of the villages were fleeing on the orders
of the Israeli government itself, yet as the villagers attempted to leave in their
cars and vans, they were targeted by Israeli jets and blown to pieces...

At the beginning of the current crisis in Palestine, Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert stated
clearly that the lives of Israeli civilians were more important than the
lives of Palestinian civilians and that the bombing of the Gaza strip and Lebanon
is designed to wipe out the threat to Israeli citizens from Hamas and Hezbollah.
In the past 5 years, 5 Israeli civilians have been killed in one town as a result
of Hamas rockets, and none have been killed as a result of Hizbollah attacks.
Yet in the past week and as a result of Israeli attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah,
14 Israeli citizens of Haifa have been killed. Clearly, and despite his words,
Olmert cares little more for the lives of Israeli Jews than he does for the
lives of Arabs.

Is It Really About Defence?

As an explanation for the murder of 300 Lebanese civilians over the past 7
days and the murder of over 3,000 Palestinian civilians and 800 Israeli civilians
over the past five years, Bush and Olmert repeatedly state that "Israel
has a right to defend itself". When the facts are analysed, this claim
is nonsensical and an outright lie. The Israeli military has been occupying
Palestinian, Lebanese (the Chebaa Farms area) and Syrian (Golan heights) for
almost 40 years. In the Palestinian land that it occupies, the Israeli government
had reduced the Palestinian population therein to little more than slaves. Israel
holds these lands in defiance of international law. This is the major source
of Palestinian and Hezbollah resentment towards and attacks on Israel. The
continuation of an enforced occupation of the sovereign territory of another
people and nation simply cannot be described as "defence". If a person
comes and throws you out of your home and occupies it by force of arms, he may
claim that he is "defending" it, but it is a defence of something
acquired through illegal means and is therefore an unlawful and
aggressive act. It is not defence.

The history of Israeli tactics in the occupied Palestinian territories over
the past 50 years make it very clear that the ultimate goal of the Israeli power
brokers has always been the removal, in one way or another,
of all Palestinians from their land.

Consider the below image of illegal Israeli settlements in the West.

Now remember, other than the miniscule Gaza strip, this is all
of the land available for a Palestinian state! The Israeli government began
building the illegal settlements in 1967, they same year that it annexed Lebanese
and Syrian land. Today, Israeli settlers live in plush comfortable houses with
all amenities on 40% of Palestinian land in the West Bank, while Palestinians
regularly have their meager houses destroyed by Israeli bulldozers. All crossings
out of Gaza and the West Bank are strictly controlled by Israeli troops, with
most Palestinians being denied the right to leave. Poverty in Gaza and the West
Bank is rife with 65% of the population living below the poverty line i.e. on
less than $2 per day.

What is very clear to Palestinians, and has been for a very long time, is that
the Israeli government never intended to allow the Palestinians
to have a state of their own. Palestinians are painfully aware of the fact that,
since 1967, the Israeli government has been preparing what was left of Palestinian
land for a final annexation into Israel, with the only impediment to the fulfillment
of this plan being the Palestinians living there. With the recent staged crisis,
Israel hopes to find the opportunity to deal with this last 'obstacle' to Greater
Israel, once and for all. Clearly then, it is the Palestinians, and now the
Lebanese, who are, and have always been engaged in defence against a long-term
and ongoing Israeli plot to dispossess them of their land and homes forever.

How do you feel about this?

When you look at the bodies of Lebanese babies, their little bodies lying mangled,
scattered around the ground beside the burnt-out van they were travelling in
only minutes before, what do you feel? Is this a just end to
this child's life?! Did he deserve it?!

When you realise that these children were ordered to leave their homes by the
Israeli military in a deliberate ploy to "flush them out" in order
to blow them to pieces with their bombs, what do you feel?

When you see the once beautiful brown curls of a 5 year old Lebanese girl,
now matted with her own blood, her clothes torn, her head hanging lifeless,
what do you feel?

When you look at the image below of another Lebanese "terrorist"
girl 'taken out' by Israeli war planes, do you think of your own children? Do
you imagine how you would feel if this were your child?

When you see the burning bodies of two lebanese civilians, the victims of Israeli
and American 'defence', is it pride you feel?

Imagine for a moment that you are the President of America, or a member of
his administration, or the Israeli Prime Minister, or a member of his administration.
Having seen these pictures, would you, as "Commander in Chief", continue
to order more air strikes on civilian targets? If you retained even an ounce
of your own humanity - your ability to empathise with the suffering of another
- you most definitely would not. You could not. Bush and Olmert
see these pictures and they remained unmoved, supremely detached from any emotion
at the sight of a dead child, and they give the order to continue the bombing.

Apparently, they want to see more dead children.

Am I being inflammatory when I say this? Am I exaggerating? Can it really be
possible that our leaders are so inhuman, so different from you and I?

No one wants to consider such a concept, but what else are we to conclude when
the bombing continues? When 270 of 300 Lebanese killed in the past week were
innocent civilians, are you going to tell me that Israeli (and therefore American)
war technology is so crude that it repeatedly hits the wrong target? In which
case, why do they keep using such devices? Are you trying to tell me that missiles
that hit the fleeing civilians were not deliberate? How far
can your credibility be stretched?

The Real Enemy Of Mankind

The 'crisis' in Palestine and Lebanon comes at a bad time for the alternative
media. Up until a few weeks ago, we could still entertain the idea that we were
making a difference. The dogged blogging and posting of articles and editorials
on web sites seemed to be having an effect. We felt we had a voice and that
it was being listened to by an ever increasing number of people. We thought
the pressure we were bringing to bear would surely stay the hand of the war
mongers, that they would 'see the light', that we could 'bring them to their
senses'. But we were wrong it seems.

If there is one glaring problem with the alternative media today it is that
they do not know the true nature of the enemy. In fact, no one seems to realise
that we are fighting an enemy at all. Most still believe that we are dealing
with a few misguided political leaders who just seem to have a really hard time
realising that their actions are causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands
of innocent people. If they could only be made aware of this, the world would
turn the corner towards peace and prosperity for all, right?

Unfortunately, there is a serious problem with this assumption.

If we, the information-deprived masses, are able to get a glimpse of the carnage
that our political leaders are causing, is it not a certainty that these same
political leaders are significantly more aware of the results of their actions?
After all, they are in possession of detailed intelligence reports on demographics,
details of targets selected and the nature and destructive power of the weapons
they employ against those targets. When we hear of an Israeli or American bomb
scoring a direct hit on a residential house that kills dozens of innocent men
women and children, our lack of knowledge of military affairs and planning allows
us to believe that maybe it was a mistake, that they didn't really mean to kill
civilians. Indeed, we need to believe this, because to believe
otherwise is to face ourselves into a very frightening scenario indeed - that
our political leaders, the men and women who sit in almost absolute power over
us, are fully conscious of their actions and therefore lack the one characteristic
that defines a person as truly human: empathy for the suffering of another human
being.

So we force ourselves to believe that the men and women with the power to kill
millions would never take delight in exercising that power. We think that because
we recoil in horror and grief at the sight of the lifeless body of a small child
lying beside the burnt out shell of the car she was travelling in before it
was hit by an Israeli or American missile, that the men who fired the missile,
or those who ordered them to fire it, are also deeply moved by such a tragic
scene. Yet we run into a problem the very moment that a second missile, then
a third and then a fourth, extinguishes more innocent lives. How many more bodies
of dead children, how many more weeks of Israeli military bombing campaigns
on civilian targets are needed before we come to the conclusion that the members
of the Israeli, American and British governments who, in full knowledge of their
actions continue to sanction or order such attacks, simply do not, cannot, feel
the same way about the massacring of innocent children as you and I?

Understandably, this is a hard one for many people to accept. To accept it
heralds the end of our cozy world-view where basically good and decent leaders,
people just like you and I, are at least striving to do what is best for the
world and its people. In its place, we find ourselves in a world where the global
power brokers, the people who control every aspect of our material lives, appear
not to care about human life at all, save their own.

How long might an impala on the serengeti expect to survive if, despite all
evidence to contrary, it continues to believe in the innate benevolence of a
lion towards its species?

This is an appropriate analogy. Scientific studies have shown that when normal
human beings are presented with a disturbing image of human suffering, an area
of the brain associated with emotion and empathy "lights up". Similar
studies carried out on known psychopaths show that they appear to lack the normal
range of human emotion. When a psychopath is shown a picture of a car, followed
by a picture of a dead child and a grieving mother, there is no difference in
brain response. There is no feeling it seems.

Psychopathy

Dr Hervey Cleckly spent years studying psychopaths up close and personal. His
book, The Mask of Sanity, shows that, outwardly, the average intelligent
psychopath bears no resemblance, neither in appearance nor actions, to Hannibal
Lecter or Ted Bundy. Neither is he in jail. On the contrary, the average psychopath
appears to be conscious of the fact that he lacks the basic human ability to
feel deep emotion and empathy for another. Early on in his life, the psychopath
learns that displays of complete indifference to the suffering of others are
reacted to with concern and sometimes anger by his family and peers. So he learns
to conceal it. At the same time, he recognises and gravitates towards others
who share his deficiency.

It is not hard to imagine that psychopaths do very well in business and politics
where the promotion of self-interest and the accrual of personal and group power
is the name of the game. Where you or I, in possession of a conscience, would
surely balk at, for example deliberately getting a work colleague fired for
no reason other than facilitate our own ascent of the corporate ladder, no such
impediment to success exists for the psychopath who simply cannot put himself
in the place of another human being and therefore feel empathy. While it has
been estimated that approximately 6% of the global population falls into the
category of psychopath (about 360 million people), their extreme self-interest
and the fact that such "ambition" is a key ingredient of success in
the world of politics and business, we assume much more than 6% of top level
corporate, government and military positions are held by people who possess
no ability to empathise with the needs or suffering of another human being.

A perusal of the last few thousand years of the history of our world quickly
reveals to us that, more than anything else, war has defined our 'evolution'
(if it can be called that). Equally obvious is the fact that, in war, soldiers
and civilians die while the men and women responsible for waging war (on both
sides) generally neither fight in the war nor are punished for their part in
it encouraging it.

Does that tell you anything?

Throughout history, small groups of people have risen to power over the masses,
and by the promotion of religious, ethnic or political divisions, they have
set large groups of ordinary human beings against each other in order to further
their personal goals. More often that not, ideologies such as 'freedom' are
used to rally the masses to fight. But history testifies that the only real
net result of war is the consolidation of power into the hands of an 'elite'
few. The Second World War led to the rise of Stalin and the murder of 50 million
Russians. It led to the creation of the state of Israel and the ongoing persecution
of Middle Eastern Arabs. It also facilitated the USA's rise to a position of
global preeminence, a situation which has caused more death and suffering over
the past 60 years than at any other time in our recent history.

Now more than ever, there is an opportunity for each of us to recognise who
the true enemy is. Why should we or our sons and daughers continue to fight
and kill each other on the command of a small group of people whose only contribution
has been to enrich themselves at our expense, at the expense of our very lives?
Are we stupid? Or are we just misinformed? The reality of our world has always
been a very clear case of Us and Them, yet we have failed to see it. We fail
to see the predatory, unfeeling nature of these people because we ourselves
lack such a nature. We project on to them our own human values of empathy and
conscience when, time and again, they have proven that they
possess no such qualities. We have allowed them to divide us, and set us at
each others throats in the name of freedom, a value that we hold dear, not they
(save for their usefulness in manipulating us).

Now more than ever, the very real yet hidden phenomenon of psychopathy
needs desperately to be uncovered. We need to avail ourselves of the evidence
that suggests that many of our political leaders are clinical, yet very smart
and careful psychopaths. There is no other plausible explanation for their smug
brutality, their deadly lies, their utter indifference to the pitiful sight
of the lifeless body of small child for whose death they are responsible.

Lest anyone begin the process of rationalising what I have said, realise that
to do so is evidence that your own humanity is being robbed from you by the
propagation of our 'leaders' psychopathic values and ideologies. "War is
peace", "Black is White" "Muslims are Terrorists" "Our
government is protecting us". Before you fall for such paramoralisms, know
this; psychopaths feel no empathy for any other human being. Race or creed does
not figure into the equation. There is significant evidence that the psychopaths
in power in the US and Israel knowingly murdered 3,000 American citizens on
September 11th 2001, few were Muslim. At present the Israeli government is placing
the lives of Israeli Jews in clear danger precisely because they simply cannot
care about the life of any other human being, Christian, Muslim, Jew they are
concerned for none but themselves.

'Armgaeddon' Approaches

As a conclusion, I would like here to present a theory for your consideration,
and while you may immediately reject it as implausible, I suggest you watch
events in the Middle East and notice the direction they take. My suggestion
is that the ultimate goal of the plan that is being currently implemented in
Lebanon and Palestine is the destruction of a majority of the population of
the modern-day Middle East.

Far from attempting to rid the world of a previously more or less non-existent
anti-Semitism, the policies pursued by successive Israeli governments have gone
a long way to increasing ill-feeling towards Jews and Israel. By repeatedly
condemning anyone who speaks out against the increasingly brutal actions of
the Israeli government as anti-Semitic, Israeli leaders and lobbyists are coming
close to making the word anti-Semitism respectable. When that happens, the demise
of Israel, the Jews and the Arabs of the Middle East will be all but assured.
That day is closer than any of us realise.

We have but one hope to prevent what appears to be an approaching major war
in the Middle East that will not be limited to that region and which will result
in the deaths of millions of innocents: we must understand the truth about the
men and women that call themselves our 'leaders', yet who offer nothing but
war, suffering and death. We must realise the that they are not like you and
I, they do not feel as you and I feel, they do not love and you and I love.
They are psychopaths, and under their stewardship death and destruction is 100%
assured.